Billy Brown // Mika

Yesterday was the birthday party of one of our best friends, Will.
We managed to keep it a complete surprise from him, and I think it was a total success in the end, well he seemed happy enough.


When I make cakes for people I like to put some thought into them, make them a bit more personal. I had two ideas for Will.. wine and guitars.
We decided against making a replica of his beloved bass, as it's beautiful and a cake would just be a charicature of it, and its imperfections would have probably annoyed him.
The other idea, wine, needed practice and I ran out of time and didn't fancy taking the risk of errecting a cake held up with wine bottles without knowing if it would work or not.
So I had to re-think. Will is one of my only friends who has an interest in proper chocolate, he thinks the darker better.
So I gave myself the challenge of making the chocolatiest cake in the world.

I made the actual cake on Thursday evening, using James Martin's cola cake recipe, the only chocolate cake recipe I trust to work now.
I planned to fill it with a dark ganache and top it with Helm Magical Icing and then put as many chocolates as possible on top, all bought from William Curley.

I'd asked my dad to buy some 70% chocolate for the ganache, as Will would approve but it wouldn't be so dark everyone else would hate it.
So I happily made the ganache but when I tried it.. bleurgh.. it was bitter and unpalatable. We checked the packet and it had been 85% chocolate. It could not have gone in the middle of the cake, and I had to get back to the office.
It was decided we'd take the risk of adding sweetened cream cheese, in an attempt to keep the perfect consistency but make it a bit more edible.
It worked, sort of. It solidified in the cake, so wasn't the gooey filling it should have been, but it was still tasty.

Helm Magical Icing is a mixture of butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and evaporated milk. It makes a silky smooth covering that you can just pour over the cake, and it gives it a lovely shiny coating.


Then the fun bit of covering the cake in chocolates, cinder toffee and nuts. We were quite pleased with how it looked in the end, and I think everyone at the party liked it, even if they didn't manage to finish the Libby-sized portions I dished out.

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S I Love You) // Chef

I've just been for a brief trip (again) to William Curley, and I was stupid enough to go without having a firm plan of what I wanted.
This meant I ended up having a hot chocolate, a bakewell tart and a milk chocolate rocher. Only so I could have time to ponder what I actually needed, of course.

Anyway, the one thing I can never resist, and christ knows how anyone else manages to resist it, is the sea salted caramel.
I can reel off a list of sea salty products;
A couture chocolate
Sea Salt Caramel Bar
Sea Salt Caramel Tart
Sea Salt Caramel Spread
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (coated in a thick, dark chocolate)
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (Just in a wrapper, so indulgently sticky and fun)
I even got to try a sea salt caramel eclair while working there... divine.

I heard that people put the spread on toast, in cakes, on brioche, in porridge, while I shamefully enjoy sneaky spoonfuls from the jar.

While it originally sounds like an odd and wrong thing, salt in something sweet, it's not. It's a match made in heaven. I have no idea whoever thought of it, but they are a genius. The salt brings out the flavour of the caramel, and cuts through the sweetness of the sugar.
And it's addictive. Don't say I didn't warn you.


Pictured is the sea salt caramel bar, an easy grab and go fix, for when picking out individual chocolates sometimes brings on feelings of guilt about how much money you could be spending, this bar gives you the option of not thinking.
A thick layer of beautifully dark Amedei chocolate to crunch through, and then you're at the liquid centre.

Go on, it's really not something to be missed.